Constructing and performing hotel hospitality culture

This article discusses the social processes underpinning the co-construction and performance of hotel hospitality culture. The influence of culture within the hospitality sector has inspired conceptual and empirical research resulting in a significant literature base. However, gaps remain in understanding how culture manifests itself through behaviour in the publicly accessible areas of a hotel. This gap was addressed by research designed to uncover the social processes and behavioural dynamics underpinning the construction of hotel culture/s. Informed by social constructionism, a purposeful sampling strategy and a range of qualitative methods were employed: participant observation, a fieldwork diary recording observations of behavioural encounters, conversational and semi-structured interviews. The findings demonstrate that hotel hospitality culture is co-constructed and performed through interactions between people. Two distinct hotel cultures emerged, Second home/extended family and Corporate leisure. The findings provide a deeper, more holistic understanding of how hospitality culture is brought to life in hotels through the taken-for-granted social encounters between people, encounters wherein hospitality is given, received and experienced.

Hospitality & Society: Critical reflections on the theorizing of hospitality

This article is the second part of a critical reflection upon the progress of Hospitality & Society in its first ten years. Analysis of the articles published highlights conceptual contributions made to the field of hospitality studies. Thirteen major themes are identified: conceptualizations of hospitality; migration and labour; lifestyle; social hospitality; hospitality, consumption, global citizenship and ethics; addressing neglected areas of research; hostipitality, violence and exploitation; hospitality careers and higher education; historical studies; image and identity; space, design and food; hospitality management and neoliberalism; hospitality and technology. Following reflection on the original goals of Hospitality & Society and the progress made, a research agenda is proposed emerging from the analysis contributing to the aim to transform the landscape of hospitality scholarship.

Reflecting on Hospitality & Society: The first ten years

This editorial is the first of a two-part critical reflection upon the progress of Hospitality & Society in its first ten years in relation to the original aims and ambitions. Drawing primarily upon the Dimensions database, a field of research analysis indicates the journal achieving multidisciplinary coverage through its publications with the four most popular fields being: studies in human society; sociology; commerce, management, tourism and services; business and management. The wide range of authors’ disciplines and subjects suggests the metaphor of hospitality is mobilizing meanings across disciplines, geographies and sectors of hospitality studies. Academic journals and books publishing papers citing articles from Hospitality & Society further reflect the breadth of the journal’s impact and reach and the relevance of hospitality to many aspects of society. Evolution of the journal is considered in relation to the editorial team’s structure as well as that of the editorial and advisory boards’ composition, acknowledging implications for the types of knowledge generated. The goal of inclusivity is considered in relation to language and contributing authors’ geographical distribution. An interdisciplinary turn in hospitality studies is noted. Key steps in the journal’s development are noted in relation to sponsorship, journal quality grading and its implications, as well as the importance of the publisher’s values. The editors give thanks to all those involved.

Theorizing hospitality: A reprise

This was the editorial for the first issue of Hospitality & Society, published in 2011. It has been reprinted to help contextualize the reflections in this 10-year anniversary issue, which consider how the journal has evolved, how its contributions have advanced the study of hospitality and society, and the future for the journal and the field. The editorial provides a narrative review of the disparate ways that hospitality has been conceptualized and studied by different disciplines. It explores hospitality as social control, as social and economic exchange and as metaphor. The piece proposes an inter- and multi-disciplinary research agenda for hospitality studies, which encompasses diverse intellectual, philosophical, methodological, ethical and political perspectives. It concludes by outlining the journal’s ambitions in fostering critical debate.

Private club culture in London and New York during the Victorian era

The private club literature is disparate and rarely draws comparisons between or among club cultures. In this article, club culture in New York and London are compared. Specifically, the history of private clubs in London and New York is explored, focusing on the latter part of the nineteenth century. Historical documents are reviewed in an attempt to establish the club culture in the respective cities, how clubs were viewed within their communities, and similarities that existed between ‘Club Land’ in London and similar club clusters in New York. While the press coverage in the respective cities seems to have been equally admiring of clubs and ‘clubmen’, some differences are identified between the respective club cultures and club identities, particularly with respect to the inclusivity of the clubs, and the expectations for the participation of women and married men in club life.

Hospitality & Society: A bibliometric analysis and the evolution of its research agenda

This bibliometric study investigated the state of hospitality research in a sample of documents published in the periodical Hospitality & Society (H&S) from 2011 to 2018. It presents an analysis of authorship, co-authorship, co-authorship networks, leading authors and institutions, words, co-words and themes, in an initial view of the social and conceptual structure of the hospitality study. The inquiry is complemented by the classification of sample articles in thematic categories according to the research agenda published in the editorial of the first edition of H&S. This analysis proved to be fruitful because of new perspectives on hospitality research beyond services related to accommodation, food and drink. The findings support researchers with a partial understanding of the hospitality field, and it suggests applying other bibliometric techniques and expanding the sample in future studies. Towards an update on the initial research agenda, representatives of different hospitality currents of thought should draw together to stimulate greater integration among researchers from the global North and South.

Hospitality & Society: A bibliometric analysis and the evolution of its research agenda

This bibliometric study investigated the state of hospitality research in a sample of documents published in the periodical Hospitality & Society (H&S) from 2011 to 2018. It presents an analysis of authorship, co-authorship, co-authorship networks, leading authors and institutions, words, co-words and themes, in an initial view of the social and conceptual structure of the hospitality study. The inquiry is complemented by the classification of sample articles in thematic categories according to the research agenda published in the editorial of the first edition of H&S. This analysis proved to be fruitful because of new perspectives on hospitality research beyond services related to accommodation, food and drink. The findings support researchers with a partial understanding of the hospitality field, and it suggests applying other bibliometric techniques and expanding the sample in future studies. Towards an update on the initial research agenda, representatives of different hospitality currents of thought should draw together to stimulate greater integration among researchers from the global North and South.

A space of welcome for (almost) everyone: A study on the tension between Brighton and Bologna’s institutional narratives and practices of welcome

Grounding on Derrida’s conceptual framing of hospitality as a continuous tension between its conditional and unconditional forms, this article examines the city as a space of welcome located halfway through the continuum explored in this Special Issue. Through an analysis of the institutional narratives fostered by Brighton and Bologna’s local governments, this piece reflects on the tension between narratives and practices of welcome. By unpacking the accounts of local government’s representatives in both cities, I demonstrate how the notion of ‘welcome’, apparently very wide-encompassing, emerges as rather selective. In addition, I reflect on the benefits that cities can achieve when employing such narratives.

Moments of (in)hospitality in cosmopolitan cities

The aim of the study is to look at cosmopolitan cities searching for moments of hospitality that take place in cosmopolitan spaces. These moments are understood as the time when acts eliminate socially built barriers and anonymity by making people closer to the establishment of relationships that may result in effective bonds (temporary or long-lasting). Photoethnography was used; 421 photographic records were taken in the five largest Brazilian cities (in economic terms): São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Brasíliaand Curitiba. In total, 130 photos were selected for analysis; twenty of them were chosen to represent the four created categories, representing moments of hospitality in cosmopolitan cities: human, architectonic, environmental and hostility. It is noticeable that, although hospitality is a relationship set among two or more individuals, it does not become effective in the absence of adjacent factors, such as architecture and/or the environment. This outcome also reinforces the thin line between hospitality and hostility, to the extent that the perception of hospitality is dependent on hostility. Thus, we expect to contribute to the reasoning about hospitality in contemporary society, which is marked by exclusion, aggressiveness, hostility and, even, moments of inhospitality.

Mundane ideologies of (in)hospitality: A guided coach tour

This article explores impressions of welcome and non-welcome in relation to a guided day tour in mainland China. The study is contextualized with regard to hospitality as ethics and tourism as a stage where the struggle for hegemonic ideology occurs. It focuses upon the author’s cognitive and emotional reception of the guides’ narratives and explores the mundane ideologies of (in)hospitality present drawing upon analysis of autoethnographic notes captured through sociological impressionism. Elements of the narrative sustaining the (in)hospitality discourse are identified. The tour serves as an embodiment of national hospitality and the guide as an ideology refractor. Ideological hospitality is one of the conditioning elements embedded in the hospitality interaction. Consideration is given to how tours might be ‘rehumanized’ through a social justice and equity guiding philosophy and education. In so doing, the study contributes to discussion regarding the possibilities of a hospitable society.